Law Students' Corner
| Publication year | 2013 |
| Pages | 16 |
| Citation | Vol. 82 No. 2 Pg. 16 |
Law Students' Corner
Preserving Your Professional Persona
By George Sand, University of Kansas School of Law, Lawrence
It was time to seize the moment. The opportunity arose for me to apply my skills acquired from law school to real life. Instead of an elaborate and eloquent fact pattern conjured by a professor with a myriad of answers, reality fashioned an instance for me to venture beyond the realm of classroom hypotheticals.
It occurred when a close friend brought a potential legal problem to my attention. When my friend's name was typed in on Google, a picture anonymously taken of her at a restaurant during lunch appeared on a website used for anonymous blogging. While the picture is innocent on its face, the dialogue below caused my friend to be concerned that her young professional reputation could be jeopardized. The standard degrading comments were not the problem, as it has become somewhat expected that those types of comments and opinions would appear below a young woman's picture. Instead, the principal concern was the specific factual allegations made regarding my friend's identity and prior occupation, which were indisputably false.
Fortunately for my friend, I had just finished my Media Law and the First Amendment final the preceding week. My mind was fresh to apply an arsenal of newly obtained knowledge to the circumstances at hand. After some extra research to cross my t's and dot my i's, I sent the website administrators an email detailing that, in my opinion as a non-lawyer, it would be in the website's best interest to remove the data in issue. One week later, I typed my friend's name in on Google, and the webpage had vanished. It was a moral victory of the highest caliber.
Which brings me to my point — attorneys everywhere need to be aware of potential Internet pages that cause damage, and know that the damages may be prevented or rectified. The Internet is the Wild West of the new era, and while there are certain regulations, enforcement is difficult. Although it was a few sentences, on a small website, on the immeasurable web, the message truly could have compromised my friend's reputation. Lawyers may face similar risks.
Keep in mind, I am not an expert in media law, nor am I a lawyer — I have only thoroughly researched the topic. I am personally an advocate of First Amendment rights, and in no way seek to...
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